


A Thrice Broken Heart

by TheSkyLarkin



Series: SkyLarkin's Whumptober 2020 Fics [10]
Category: Kingdom Hearts (Video Games)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Whump, Freeform, Gen, Kingdom Hearts III Spoilers, Mentioned Everyone who was on the beach at the end of KHIII, Mentioned Sora (Kingdom Hearts), Missing Scene, Survivor Guilt, Whumptober 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-19
Updated: 2020-10-19
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:00:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27101590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSkyLarkin/pseuds/TheSkyLarkin
Summary: Kairiand Sora, sitting in a tree, A-N-G-S-T-I-N-G. The obligatory "Kairi reacts to the end of KH3" fic. Spoilers for KH3 (and the DLC sort of), written before the release of Memory of Melody.Challenge: Whumptober 2020Prompts: No. 19 - “Broken Hearts” “Grief” “Survivor’s Guilt”See End Notes for comprehensive warnings/tags
Relationships: Kairi & Riku & Sora (Kingdom Hearts), Kairi & Riku (Kingdom Hearts), Kairi/Sora (Kingdom Hearts)
Series: SkyLarkin's Whumptober 2020 Fics [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1946617
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	A Thrice Broken Heart

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to [Apollosvotive](https://apollosvotive.tumblr.com/)/[lihgtwood](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lihgtwood/pseuds/Lihgtwood) for beta reading!

It’s happened again. Sora is gone, and Kairi is left on the Destiny Islands, doomed to wait for something to change—for the wheel of destiny to turn without her. She wants to scream and rage at the indignity of it all… But that’s not what princesses do, and there is an entire audience of people (some more familiar than others) down on the beach below. A “princess” wouldn’t make a scene in front of all of her guests, would she?

The first time it happened at least Kairi had the excuse that her body and her heart had been forcibly separated; there was nothing she could have done to stop Sora from grabbing the keyblade and plunging it into his flesh to free both of their hearts from his body. Only the threat of Ansem (in possession of Riku) afterward had kept Kairi from breaking down in tears as Sora’s body dissolved into particles of light in her arms—surely there had to have been another way to extract her heart from Sora? One that didn’t involve him dying?

Kairi just knows that there’s no way Sora could have known that stabbing himself with the keyblade wouldn’t have permanently ended his life… or that Kairi’s status as a Princess of Heart would have revived him later. But Sora had never been one to do things by halves. If Donald or Goofy had been quicker with their weapons, or if Kairi hadn’t noticed one particular shadow that felt different from all of the others…

This time around, she isn’t alone on the island… and that makes everything worse. Kairi is aware that nearly everyone on the beach has gone quiet as they’ve all finally noticed Sora’s disappearance. No gasps of shock, no audible confusion—the exception being the three kids from Twilight Town: she can hear Hayner, Pence, and Olette’s vaguely distressed noises as well as King Mickey’s unmistakable voice as he attempts to explain what happened in Scala ad Caelum and the Final World (or so she assumes) to the non-keyblade wielders who had a minimal role in the war.

As for the rest of the Guardians of Light, their silence is deafening. Kairi feels their gazes turn towards her, filled with sadness and pity. (The latter stings far more than the former, it’s not as if she hasn’t been here before. Life has stomped her into the dirt too many times for them to continue to treat her like some delicate flower.) In response, she wants to leap into the ocean with no intention of ever coming back to the surface.

Roxas and Naminé would never have existed without Sora’s first sacrifice in Hollow Bastion, and—from what the young scientist from Radiant Garden, whose bangs were attempting a hostile takeover of his face, had been trying to explain over the gummiphone—Xion would not exist if Roxas hadn’t been born either. Surely their rights to exist mattered more than her short-lived despair at Sora’s disappearance, followed by waiting over a year for him and Riku to return?

Why hadn’t she just gone with him? Why hadn’t she grabbed his hand and leaped across the divide before demanding to come along with him to help find Riku? (And King Mickey, of course.) She had every right to come along with him, Donald, and Goofy: Riku was her friend too! Even if she didn’t have the means to fight yet, she could have helped out in other ways—perhaps her presence in Castle Oblivion would have thrown a wrench into the Organization’s plans and made it easier to rescue Naminé from them…

Or perhaps her being there would have made everything worse. Out of the corner of her eye, Kairi can see two slim figures in dresses (one white and one black) move towards the shack on the beach, as if to take the stairs within up to the bridge connected to her island. But a taller figure with spiky red hair stops them with a sad shake of his head. She can’t see them, but she just knows that Roxas and Lea’s other friend are probably also hovering uneasily behind the two girls as well. (As she was able to see past her teardrop-tattooed kidnapper to see Lea, she’ll be able to look past the cruel yellow-eyed tormentor and see Isa as well someday... but she just doesn’t have it in her to do that right now)

If there was anyone who knew about losing their friends to self-sacrifice and being helpless to stop it, it was Lea. Kairi feels relieved that he’s apparently decided to stay put on the beach; she can’t face him right now, not after he’d miraculously gotten back everyone that he’d lost just as her whole world has fallen apart yet again. She tries to wipe the tears from her own face all the same. This is his—and all the rest of the Guardians’ of Light—big moment of triumph after so many years of sadness, and she should be sharing it with them. It just isn’t fair…

The second time it happened, Kairi no longer had the excuse that she was unable to fight—even if it seemed like Riku had just given her a keyblade moments ago. Just when Xemnas had appeared to be finally defeated and everyone would be able to put this awful place behind them, the doors to Kingdom Hearts slammed shut behind her, cutting her off from Sora and Riku once again after she’d just gotten them back.

She and King Mickey had tried to reopen the door with their keyblades, but it was no use. In the end, Donald and Goofy had to practically drag them away as the Castle that Never Was began to collapse around them. Only the letter, a simple poem that Kairi had poured all of her yearning for someone whom she could barely remember at the time, had saved Sora and Riku from spending an eternity on the shores of that dark ocean. She had inadvertently averted their tragic fates, but it wasn’t as if she herself had really done anything…

It was a letter in a bottle that brought Sora and Riku back to her, and it was another that had taken them away again. As she was left behind on the island yet again, Kairi tried to find some consolation in the hope that at least her friends would be safe… until she got the message that Sora had nearly fallen to the darkness and almost possessed by the evil force responsible for both Ansem and Xenmas. When Yen Sid had offered to train her in the ways of the keyblade properly, Kairi couldn’t say yes fast enough. If Sora wouldn’t look out for himself like he had looked out for her, it was time to return the favor.

And so she stepped forward to realize her wish of being an active participant in her own destiny… for all the good that had done in the end. All of that keyblade training with Merlin and the Fairies had amounted to her freezing up when attacked by a Xehanort-possessed Terra, helplessly swallowed up by a massive storm of heartless to the point that Sora had to break reality to save her and the other Guardians of Light, kidnapped by Xemnas, and nearly dead when used by Master Xehanort as a trick to make Sora finish the summoning of the X-blade. Having been turned into crystal and shattered hadn’t hurt nearly as much as having her heart broken when Sora had to disappear _yet again_ , and it was still because of her.

The third time Sora had to sacrifice himself to save her was the worst because Kairi had tried so hard to finally bring about an end to this morbid little ritual of theirs this time. Her accidental success at keeping Sora tethered to the living world after the heartless attack had given her false hope going into the final battle. But she was out of excuses now. If only she’d somehow fought harder to protect herself, maybe Sora would still be here with her…

The wooden bridge behind Kairi creaks as four people approach her paopu tree. The first person’s identity is obvious: years of hearing him traverse these old boards mean that Kairi could pick out Riku’s footsteps among the noise, even with his new shoes. The unfamiliar clink of metal on softer footfalls probably indicates that the second person coming towards her was Master Aqua. Kairi didn’t really remember Radiant Garden (she had attempted to repress all she’d remembered after waking up on the beach on the Destiny Islands, and it had been mostly successful) or her, but Master Aqua had eventually lost a lot due to Xehanort as well, even with Terra and Ventus returned to her. Even so, Kairi doesn’t think she’s ready for words of comfort from either a close friend or relative stranger yet.

Although the last two people approaching might be even harder to hear from. Donald’s webbed feet make a distinctive slap on the wooden planks that no human could have replicated, and there’s no question about whose heavy footsteps would be following in his wake. (Not with Sora gone…) Once again, Kairi can’t help but feel a pang of guilt in her selfishness: she and Riku had known Sora for longer, but Donald and Goofy had been with him to the literal End of the World and back. Kairi knows she shouldn’t be jealous—they and King Mickey were just as much of Sora’s friends as she was. (Although she and Sora… Did it matter anymore?) It wasn’t as if they’d been trying to monopolize Sora’s time away from her—they were trying to stop Xehanort’s schemes and defeat him for the greater good. It wasn’t a competition…

Speaking of competitions, it was Riku that Kairi was dreading talking to the most. From the previous cycles, she already knows how this conversation is going to play out: Riku will announce that he’s going off on his own to look for Sora, then refuse Kairi’s offers/demands that she come along with him—not because he doesn’t think she can handle herself, but because he is terrified of losing her too. That’s what Sora had done, and Riku has been acting too much like Sora for his own good…

And who asked Sora to sacrifice himself for her every single time anyway? Why was he always saving Kairi, who couldn’t even return the favor reliably, at his own expense? She had never asked him to do that! Why—

Kairi feels the trunk of the paopu tree droop a little as Riku takes a seat beside her, on the opposite side of where Sora had been previously sitting. The consoling hand Riku hesitantly places on her shoulder is enough to trigger a fresh wave of tears in her eyes. The entire island seems to fall silent as Riku pulls her closer and Kairi can no longer keep all of her grief inside. She feels some of his own tears fall onto her shoulder and that just makes her cry even harder. This might be harder for him, Kairi realizes. While she’s gone through this ordeal three times now, Riku’s only had to go through losing Sora and being unable to do anything about it just this once. This overwhelming grief and feeling of helplessness is utterly foreign to him.

It’s happened again. But that doesn’t mean that it still doesn’t hurt.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Constructive criticism is appreciated!
> 
> Triggers/Warnings: Misplaced guilt, Brief suicidal thoughts, Emotional Whump


End file.
